Brexit Deal: Referendum

Debate between Lee Rowley and Julia Lopez

Monday 11th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the debate. We have a veritable smorgasbord of e-petitions before us, so all of us can probably choose at least one of them to support and push forward.

I have been listening to the debate since it started and I have to say that I find Brexit debates, both in this place and in the other place, relatively dispiriting. Of course, I am not seeking to cast aspersions on colleagues here, but I find the debate dispiriting. We start from the principle of trying to debate something, and I came here today thinking that we would have a wonderful theoretical debate on the value of representative versus participative or direct democracy, the utility of referendums versus parliamentary democracy, and how the inherent tension between those concepts has caused such theoretical and practical problems in the past 18 months or so. What immediately happens, however, is that we all go back into our tribes depending on whether we like or dislike Brexit. Many of the speeches that I have heard, which have been heartfelt and have clearly come from a place of real principle, have fallen back on to whether people support Brexit or do not support it.

We have to be more careful about these kinds of discussion. I have heard massive misuse of polling in just the past hour and a half. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) talked about how we should have some kind of independent arbiter to judge the correctness or otherwise of what politicians say. I think that that is a terrible idea, but if we are going to do it, I gently say to the right hon. Gentleman that we might start by banning politicians from using one poll to prove that something is suddenly a comprehensive, complete and totally true statement. If we want to play that game, a poll carried out by Opinium says exactly the opposite. I understand that the Survation poll, which has been quoted so extensively in this place already, also gives the Labour party an eight-point lead. I know that Opposition Members are delighted about that, but I do not believe that 45% of the people in my country believe in neo-Marxism and I hope that it will not happen. I will not go down the party political route, other than to say that.

I have heard a number of different comments today and I want to take up a few of them. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who is no longer in his place, talked at one point about how, if we are honest as Members of Parliament, most of us know that ultimately Brexit is a bad idea. I think it was Elizabeth I who said, “Don’t seek windows into men’s souls.” I do not subscribe to that view. I genuinely understand why people in my constituency voted 63% to leave; I understand why I voted to leave. It was not because of a hatred of the European Union or because of the caricature of how we are that some people try to propose. It was not because of the lies that certain people have talked about in here, which I absolutely disagree with. It was actually because we happen fundamentally to believe that the future of our country can be better served in a different way from what has happened in the past 40 years. I ask those people on the opposite side of the debate just to think carefully about some of the comments that they make, because I do not believe in the depths of my soul that Brexit is a bad idea. I think it is a good idea, but I also understand the challenges that those people are putting forward. We should not enter binary discussions or make assertions.

[Julia Lopez]

I followed the speech by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) as closely as I could, and he seemed to be saying not only that we need Parliament to protect the British people from their decision, but that we need the EU to protect the British people from our own Parliament. I wonder whether my hon. Friend has a little more faith in this place and its people.

[Lee Rowley]

I absolutely hope that that would be the case. It is utterly important that we ensure that there is a wide debate about the issues, but ultimately we start from the principle that a large number of people—the largest number of people ever—have made a decision and we should seek to honour that.